


we could be heroes, me and you

by theredhoodie



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Heavy Angst, X-Men: Days of Future Past References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 02:29:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12644295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: Six years post The Gifted season one, John, Clarice, and others are on the run for their lives from sentient Sentinels, heading toward the small group of resurfaced X-Men. But when John gets injured on the way to the X-Men, it's all Clarice can do to keep herself together as time grows short.





	we could be heroes, me and you

**Author's Note:**

> So this was sparked by two things: one, seeing someone's theory about Clarice's facial markings appearing after a strenuous use of her power, and two, wanting to write Thunderblink.
> 
> I'm sorry this is so angsty (if it helps, I absolutely cried while writing this, so maybe grab some tissues) but what can you really expect from me huh?
> 
> Edited a little by myself, I hope any mistakes aren't terrible!

The Sentinel came out of nowhere. The only one who knew where it was and where it was coming from was John. He turned to face it while yelling for everyone to run. They didn't listen, as per usual. It was too hard of a fight for one to go in alone. Even someone as indestructible as John Proudstar.

Clarice skidded to a stop, taking in the scene with bright green eyes. The machine sent a blast at John, sending him stumbling back a few steps. Narrowing her eyes, Clarice took a breath and whipped around, meeting Lauren's eyes. With a nod, Clarice ripped through space with a toss of her wrist and Lauren jumped through the portal. Landing steady on her feet behind the Sentinel, she condensed the air around it, pinning it in place.

Without the need for the silent agreement, Clarice created another portal just behind John on the ground, its flickering exit point hovering in the air above. He dove through and punched straight through the heavy metal exterior. Lauren added air within the hole and expanded it until the machine burst apart, sending a spray of oil and grease through the air before falling heavily to the ground.

"Are you okay?" Clarice asked as John jogged over. He nodded and she slid an arm around his back, holding him close for a moment before Lauren joined them. The young blonde woman had changed a lot in the six years since she and her brother arrived at the Mutant Underground in Georgia. Despite the age difference, Clarice would actually consider her a friend, something the magenta haired mutant had never expected to have in her life for this long. Friends, family, this little motley crew of mutants fighting for their lives.

John's casual breathing hissed to a stop and his body tensed, eyes searching the darkness.

Everyone had been traveling together for so long that even Lauren noticed. "What is it?" she asked, her own muscles tense in anticipation.

"Someone else," John murmured, moving away from Clarice.

"Someone?" Clarice echoed. They were supposed to be meeting with the others by now and then rendezvousing with the X-Men. They should keep moving. Her past experiences taught her that staying still for long usually ended badly.

He lifted his hand up in a fist, signaling them to be quiet so he could concentrate. Clarice bit her lip and held her breath, anticipating another attack, though she stayed where she was as he walked closer to the robot corpse.

" _Clarice_ ," Lauren said softly, widening her eyes a little and jerking her head to the side. All were signs that they should be going. They had a schedule to keep and if they continued to waste Clarice's portals for a fight, she'd start getting too tired to portal them over the wide expanses that they had to travel across.

Someone stepped out of the darkness, wrapped in shadows. A tall woman with dark hair and a vibe that told all of them that she had been one of the  _bad_  mutants even before the world went to hell.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as the woman smirked and clamped a hand around John's neck. A forked snake's tongue slipped out through her lips and John wrenched himself out of her grip.

"John!" Clarice yelled, her feet already launching her toward him.

He punched and the woman dodged, moving as fluidly as a snake. If he just took a second, he could calculate her movements…

But she didn't give him the time. The woman breathed at him, the air leaving her lungs a green and fiery mist, enveloping him in a cloud that he had no choice but to breathe in. The air was sickly poison.

Lauren saw this and created a shield around Clarice to keep her from the poison as the woman melted back into the shadows.

"Be careful!" Lauren yelled as Clarice pounded against the bubbly shield.

John was down on a knee, the air not thinning around him as it should. He was forced to breathe it in. He could feel it coating his organs, his lungs struggling to take it all in and to find clean air.

While keeping the shield up around Clarice, Lauren did her best to clear the air around John. She felt his form and pushed the toxic smoke  _away_ , though it struggled as it if it was sentient.

"Let's go!" she yelled sharply, letting down the shield around Clarice.

Clarice created a large portal and went to John's side. He was still on his knees, coughing, but moved when Clarice got to him and pulled him toward her portal. Lauren let the poison go just before jumping through the glowing portal.

With nothing to attack, the green cloud descending onto the Sentinel, eating away at the metal.

The mutants stumbled through to the first rendezvous point. Andy was there with the others. He and Lauren went directly to each other and hugged. Dreamer had been taken three years ago, and Sage had disappeared off the face of the earth. Lorna and Marcos were across the country, doing their best. That left Shatter and Andy and Harry to meet with them and go to the X-Men, who had suddenly resurfaced as if from a dream.

"What happened?" Shatter asked as John continued to cough, his body trying to rid itself of the toxin but the poison was tougher than him.

"I don't know," Clarice said, helping John to sit heavily against a wall. "Someone came out of the darkness and…poisoned him."

"Will he be okay?" Andy asked. He had long since grown into his powers, surpassed puberty, and become a very strong ally to the mutants as the humans bonded with robots to overtake them all.

Clarice touched John's skin: cool and sweaty. "I don't know," she repeated, crouching in front of him and taking his head in her hands, brushing her thumbs over his cheekbones. "Hey, John? Can you talk to me?"

His body, realizing it was fighting a losing battle, settled. He took in a shallow breath of fresh air. "Yeah," he said. His mouth tasted like it was coated in chemicals. "I should have seen this coming."

"How many times do I have to tell you that you're not a fortune teller?" she asked, unable to keep herself from teasing him. It was just who she was, and it came out in full force when she was trying to hide from something emotionally heavy.

She was rewarded with a small smile from John.

Letting one of her hands drift to his chest, she pressed against his sternum. "What's going on in there?" she asked, ignoring everyone else in the room. Lauren was letting them in on what happened, but that wasn't important for Clarice now. John was her priority.

He lifted one of his hands and gripped her small, slender fingers gently. "Poison," he said. His organs were just as reinforced as the rest of him, but they were still  _organs_. While a knife or bullet couldn't puncture a lung or his liver, it did nothing to battle against the very air he needed to survive. "It's not…dissipating."

Clarice tried not to show concern on her face, but she wasn't good at being stoic. Squeezing his hand, she got to her feet. "I'll be right back," she said, though it didn't look like he was apt to move any time soon.

Walking over to the others, they hushed what they were whispering about as she joined them. "I don't know if he'll be okay to fight, but we have a schedule to keep," she said, trying to be the sort of person that John would want her to be. Keep moving,  _lead_. "Let's get a few hours of sleep and then we start heading toward the X-Men."

They had to accept it.

Lauren gave Clarice a quick hug before moving over to one of the pieces of furniture in the abandoned building. There were a few cots, some couches and chairs. They'd all seen better days, but it was better than sleeping on the floor.

Clarice returned to John, who had his eyes closed, his head resting back against the concrete wall. She pushed some of his hair back from his forehead and allowed herself one tiny moment of vulnerability before she hooked her small hands around his arm and started to pull him to his feet.

"Come on," she said as he used the wall for support. "Let's find somewhere for you to rest."

He didn't protest and they headed toward the nearest cot amid the kaleidoscope of half finished walls. He sat down heavily and she pressed him back with firm hands.

"Clarice," John said—he always liked to say her name  _just so_  when she was being stubborn, "I don't think I can just sleep this off."

"It wouldn't hurt to try," she said, not letting up until he was lying on the cot. She perched on the uncomfortable metal edge. "How does it feel?"

"Like trying to breathe through acid concrete."

She made a face. "Unpleasant."

"Yeah." He tried to laugh but only managed to cough until he could suck in enough air through the poison to sustain his lungs.

Clarice blinked rapidly and fidgeted with the edge of his shirtsleeve. "Let's just try to get some sleep okay? Maybe the X-Men have a healer with them." It was a big maybe. Healers typically didn't have offensive powers, which meant that they were more easily picked off.

"Okay," John said quietly, slipping his arm across her thighs, his hand molding around her hip.

She tried not to think about much of anything, just leaned down and kissed him. She didn't want to steal any of his air, but she needed the reassurance. With a little shuffling they both managed to fit on the cot without breaking it, lying on their sides, Clarice's back to John's chest.

She stared into the dimly lit semi-room. She could hear others talking—she guessed it was Lauren and Andy—and she could feel John's body slip between chilled and hot as an hour slogged by.

There was no way she could sleep. John's arm was tucked completely around her, holding her close in a way that she knew he wasn't asleep either. He took on quite a softer edge when he was actually asleep.

"What're we gonna do?" she whispered, not allowing herself the thought of losing him. It just  _wasn't_  going to happen. He was indestructible. She'd seen him fall out of an airplane and live with nothing but a small fracture. He'd taken blows from machines that would have crippled any other person. He was resilient in spirit as well, a commanding force that was always there, unwavering.

John sucked in another shallow breath. "When you see James, tell him—"

Her eyebrows snapped together. "Whoa, whoa," she rolled over onto her back, "when  _I_  see James?"

His expression told her all she needed to know but didn't want to face.

"No, no,  _no_." She pushed away from him and stood, crossing her arms tightly across her chest and taking in fast breaths. "Whatever you need to tell your brother,  _you_ ," she turned toward him, "can tell him yourself."

" _Clarice_." There it was again. That tone. That stupid tone that told her how much he cared. She watched him with what she hoped was an angry expression as he heaved himself to a sitting position. "I don't think I'm making it through this."

The words sat heavy in the air, unsettling and dark. She wasn't having any of it. Tears prickled her eyes but her anger burned them away. "Don't say that! Let me take you to a hospital." She reached forward.

"They won't help us."

"I'll call Caliban and he can find us a healer."

John shook his head sadly. "After what happened last time, I doubt Caliban will help us again."

"God dammit, John, let me help you!" Clarice stamped her foot and fisted her hands, shoving them under her armpits.

"Help me by just being here. Please?"

The word wrapped around her like a vice. If she stopped being angry she would face the reality of the situation and she couldn't handle that. Not after everything they'd been through.

But if what he was saying was true, did she really want to spend their last hours together filled with anger?

Dropping her arms, she stepped closer to him and offered him her hands. "Let's at least sit somewhere that won't bend," she said, trying her hardest to keep her composure.

Five minutes later, they were sitting on the ground, using some pillows for cushion, the street lights coming in through the boards over the window giving enough illumination to see. Their fingers were laced together between them.

"What are you gonna tell James?" she asked, still clinging to the thought that the brothers would finally be able to reunite after so many years apart.

"To not be so reckless, especially not now. And to not let anger rule him."

"It's not that easy," Clarice said. "It's easier to be angry."

"Of course it is. That doesn't mean we should be."

Clarice bit her tongue. It was so easy to slip into despair. The world was a mess, with the entirety of anyone who wasn't a mutant—although some mutants joined the opposing side—fighting to kill off every last remaining person with the X-gene. John had always been one of those rare souls who thought that some sort of peace could come between humans and mutants.

She didn't want to spoil that ideal for him.

"Do you remember when Aurora was born?" she asked instead. Somehow, miraculously, both Eclipse and Polaris were still alive, as was their powerful daughter. They managed to keep their family together, which had always given Clarice hope for her and John.

"Yeah," John said with a touch of amusement.

They had moved away from the HQ near Atlanta with the crazed SS agent coming after them for blood. It wasn't as large or secure, but they made do. Most everyone had been there, but they had to all be moved out and as far away as they could because Lorna ended up connecting to any metal nearby and it had been more than a little dangerous.

"It's a good thing that Caitlin was there."

Clarice nodded, leaning her head back against the wall. "I'm not the best midwife, I'll admit." It wasn't so much the event itself that she wanted to remind him of. She wanted him to remember how it was like when they were all together. "Suddenly there was this new life in the world and everyone was together, experiencing the hope that we all needed to feel in that moment."

He smiled a little bit. It may have taken  _years_  but at least his optimism was rubbing off on her. Even if it was only just.

They continued to talk about those tiny moments, knowing that Clarice should sleep to recharge for the multiple jumps to the new location, but both knowing that wasn't going to happen.

They mentioned when John helped her find her best, and only, friend, way back in the beginning when things were tense between them. The time they managed to put together an all-encompassing holiday meal and have it  _not_  interrupted by Sentinel Services. John teaching her a bit of physical combat in case she ever needed it. Their first roundabout "date" that involved a stakeout and a triple portal jump that had been the start of Clarice's new power development, leaving a new sharp mark above her left eye. Watching Aurora grow up, manifesting powers earlier than anyone they'd ever seen.

The hours slipped by until John was laying on the ground, his head in her lap, his lungs so caked in toxin that it was a struggle just to breath, much less move. Clarice ran her hands through his hair. A part of her wished she had called Caliban right away and demanded he help them, but John had been right. Nothing she could say would get him to help them.

She was powerless, watching John  _die_  and being unable to help.

John lifted his hand slowly to her face, brushing the backs of his knuckles across the mark under her right eye before his palm settled against her cheek. "I love you."

She hated to hear the words because she knew that "goodbye" was laced among them. She blinked back tears and pressed his hand against her face, her other resting on his chest. Once upon a time, she'd spent nights agonizing over her feelings and John's feelings, wondering what was real and what wasn't, but five years of fighting and living side-by-side while being  _together_  was more than enough to brush aside any  _what-ifs_.

"Who wouldn't? I'm great," she said, sniffling to keep all of her emotions inside. She couldn't break, not  _now_.

He would have chuckled if he could, so he just smiled and shook his head a little bit.

"I love you, too," she murmured more seriously, letting his hand go. He squeezed hers resting above his heart and she resumed stroking his hair. "I can't believe this is happening."

A lot of people had left or abandoned Clarice throughout her life, but there wasn't anything he could do now. He was dying, it was as simple as that.

"Look after James," he said, his own eyes blurring with tears. No one was truly prepared to die. He thought he'd be ready, but fear washed through him in that moment as death crept closer, taking his life one second at a time.

"I will," Clarice nodded. "I promise."

He held on, blinking until his vision was clear and he could see her face, nothing but her face, and then he was just…gone. Like that. Snuffed out.

The second he went still, his hand no longer holding hers, tears slid down her cheeks. "John?" she whispered out. She shook him, as if that would suddenly make his heart start beating. This wasn't real if she didn't let herself think about it.  _This isn't real, this isn't real, not real, not real_. But he wasn't moving and whatever spark of life that he had was  _gone_ , she could feel the lack of it in the space around her. "Shit," she gasped out before a sob escaped her lips and tears flooded her face.

The building shook.

Could someone's heart actually break? Clarice had never felt like this before. Not when her family abandoned her, not when her best friend died. This was as if someone had decided to stab her heart but let her live anyway.

"Clarice!" Harry skittered into the small room. His face fell when she saw her in tears, clutching  _a body_. "We have to go,  _now_."

Lauren joined him a moment later. She let out a small gasp, her eyes glistening with tears. "The Sentinels found us," she said gently. "Clarice, they'll bring the building down."

"I…I can't," Clarice whispered.

The building shook. Andy's muffled yells didn't make any sense to her. He was trying to hold off the monsters until she could get them out of there.

"Clarice," Lauren said, kneeling in front of the older woman and taking one of her hands, prying it away from John's shirt. "He's…he's gone. We have to move or we'll all die here."

What was she doing? She  _had_  to get everyone out of here. But a part of her, a large part, just wanted to stay here and let the Sentinels take her too. The instant the thought crossed her mind, John's voice came to her, reminding her of her promise to look after James, and she slowly got up, choking back the sobs that threatened to engulf her whole body.

Lauren put an arm around her shoulders, pausing with her when Clarice stopped to look back into the room where she was just  _leaving him_. Tears flowed down her face and her throat burned as they moved into the same room as Andy. She thought of where she had to go, but she also kept thinking of John. With a cry, she opened a portal, not to the first of three portal stops she'd originally planned, but directly to the rendezvous point. It wasn't what the X-Men had told her to do, but they could go to hell if they complained about it.

The others didn't pause or wait for her to tell them to jump through. The portal was almost two thousand miles away, the strain of it overtaking the ache in her heart. Once they were through, she jumped as well, landing heavily on the ground. The portal closed behind her just as the building rumbled and started to fall.

She stood, watching the empty air. Lauren came to her side again, just in time to catch her as she blacked out.

She dreamed about John. Nothing specific, just… _him_. His face and his voice and his presence.

When she finally woke up, almost a day had passed. She was lying on an uncomfortable makeshift bed in a location that only she had been privy to. She squinted into the room, and her heart caught in her throat. "John?" she croaked out. It wasn't John. But they looked so alike that he must have been… "James." She pushed herself up on her elbows. Her entire body felt as if it had been run over by a truck.

"Yeah," he said. They'd never met before, but it was impossible not to see the resemblance. "Clarice, right? Lauren and the others filled us all in."

So they'd made it. Thank god.

She got up slowly, feeling sorer than ever. "I was thinking of John when I…it must have brought me to you."

The younger Proudstar clenched his jaw. "Lauren said John um…he…"

Clarice bit down on her bottom lip and tears stung her eyes. "He told me to keep an eye on you. To make sure you don't rule yourself with anger."

That very emotion flashed through his dark gaze. "Easier said than done."

"That's what I said," she said softly, gripping the edge of the thin mattress. "I should meet the others. The X-Men. God, I can't believe I'm actually saying that."

"Welcome to the club," James said.

Just then, Lauren appeared in the doorway. "You're awake," she said, her face brightening just a little bit.

James moved out of the way and Lauren hugged Clarice tightly. Fresh tears trickled down each of their faces as they held on to each other.

Finally, they stepped back and Lauren's brows furrowed. "You have another mark," she said. Back when things were lighter, the two of them had talked about the new marks that would appear on Clarice's face whenever she used her powers under great strain. Clarice had commented with an eyeroll that she was gonna run out of space pretty soon.

The room had a small mirror over a sink in the corner, and Clarice walked over to it. Sure enough, she had a sizable diamond shaped mark between her eyebrows, on her forehead. She lifted a hand and gently prodded her skin.

She dropped her hand to her chest, her fingers forming into a fist. Her heart beat steady beneath her ribs. If she really thought about it, all of her marks belonged to John.

The first: the night they met.

The second: when she got sick and he made sure not to leave her, even as she tore apart the HQ.

The third: their first quote-unquote date.

And now this one…

Swallowing hard, she wiped her face, gingerly touching the mark on her forehead and turned to Lauren and James, who was lingering at the doorway. "Let's go meet the X-Men," she said.

While her heart still felt as if it had been broken and still bled within her chest, she would forever hold a bit of John with her forever.


End file.
